Achievements

1. ISDEN serves as a leading reference among the academic world, the health services, the Estrategia Sanitaria Nacional de Prevención y Control de la TB (ESNPCTB – MINSA, National Health Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis), and internationally regarding ethical and bioethical topics and the fight against tuberculosis. ISDEN has:

2. ISDEN organized and supported an annual national meeting with authorities and professors from the FAEN in which they analyzed, dialogued, and reflected on training in ethics during nursing school. Similarly, this sort of annual reflection was done during conferences with nursing students in their first and last years. Even after financial support was suspended, those who had attended continued to come and finance their own participation because of the value of the conference.

3. ISDEN has empowered and strengthened the abilities of various social groups, including health promoters, pastoral health agents, health personnel, students, professors, persons affected by tuberculosis, and others. Among these groups, ISDEN promotes human dignity, comprehensive health care, raising community awareness, human rights, health as a right, the comprehensive fight against tuberculosis, ethics, and social responsibility. These are the focal points of ISDEN as an institution. Thus, ISDEN promotes and participates in the defense of life.

Lessons Learned

1. Involving social groups in the planning, development, and evaluation of activities, trusting in their abilities, and empowering them is the most productive way to achieve an exponential increase in the growth and influence of these activities.

2. The act of listening to the contributions of the participants during the different steps of the project enriches the results.

3. The humanization of health care is a slow, gradual process. It progresses more quickly when authorities, professors, and students are involved and interact with one another. We recognize the need for continual support of these projects.

4. Alliances and conversations between different social groups and institutions increases the breadth of projects, builds bridges between different sectors of society, and ultimately optimizes one's efforts, resources, and potential in working towards a common objective. These alliances give greater sustainability to proposed projects.

5. An inclusive, horizontal, participative, and supportive strategy allows for the mobilization of many different groups in a creative way. It also provides a way to appropriate specific parts of a project to an individual social organization, which makes that group even more dedicated to the given task. This method thus converts many different groups into part of the broader solution and provides for the sustainability of the project, as the project is spread out among different sectors.

6. Encouraging TB patient organizations to make their voices heard is integral in the fight against TB. When patients are able to express themselves, the fight against TB will gradually become more humanistic and comprehensive rather than solely biomedical.

7. Focusing on the human being as both an individual and as part of a team is important in promoting commitment and responsibility to the execution of projects. With this type of focus, it is possible to work with many diverse groups.